Monday, August 15, 2016

Dealing With A Deadlock in My WIP

I have
recently been having trouble with a book of mine, and I may have mentioned it
one or two (or several!) times in recent posts. The problem was that I was done
with two-thirds of the book, and I was stuck on one-third. But this one-third
was important, because it included both the introduction and the conclusion,
chapters that I think are very crucial. Just to clarify, this is a non-fiction
book, and it’s a book that I have had tons of trouble with before, probably
because it’s one of my most ambitious till date.

Anyway, I
don’t want or need to bore you with details about why exactly I was stuck or
what was going wrong with the book. Suffice it to say, I had no ideas, I felt
that everything I had already written wasn’t good enough (in other words it
sucked), but I didn’t have any better ideas. Basically I was scared. I was scared
that all my hard work over months on the remaining two-thirds would be brought
down by this section, because rightly or wrongly, the first chapter of a book
is what most people would read to determine whether they wanted to read any
further and even whether they will buy the book. One of the chapters I was
stuck on was also in the middle, but again, to me it was an important chapter.
And of course, the conclusion tied it all together.

And this was
probably the reason I was stuck. I was scared of the content, scared of getting
it wrong, and I had made it all too important. Each of those chapters was
totally important, and I was in danger of messing them up big time.

I even stopped
working on the book. I found plenty of excuses, there were other things to do,
other books to write, promotion stuff to do - basically I was busy. I didn’t
have time to worry about this book.

But I did.
That’s all I worried about some days, others it was one of many. It was always
on my mind, and the problem got bigger and bigger. I couldn’t see a way out. I
was doing that one thing we have been told not to do over and over - wait for
inspiration.

So I decided
to tackle it head on. As I keep advising here on the blog, I tackled the
smallest, easiest part of the easiest chapter. And I tried to lower my mental
standards as much as possible, stared down the fear (otherwise known as “Resistance”
as Steven Pressfield calls it) and just made progress an inch at a time. I
added a sentence here. I did some research and found something to rethink
there. The more time I spent with it, I realized I could re-arrange one of the
sections in that chapter, moving things around.

And as I
worked on it, I stumbled upon inspiration. A book I was reading on innovation,
completely unrelated to the topic, or so I thought, gave me some research to
add. Another book I was listening to, on trading and Wall Street, again a
totally unrelated subject, helped me to see a way of structuring my
introduction. I found the story I wanted to open a chapter with. I came across
the facts I needed to fill in the gaps in the unredeemable middle chapter,
which is now shaping up nicely.

The whole time
I fretted and waited for the book to get better, waited for some miraculous way
out of my deadlock, I had nothing. But when I decided to work on it anyway, to
just tweak whatever I could, to get into the trenches and fight my way out of
the mud, I started to see the light. On my book, and in general, about my
writing.

Some days it
feels like the book is this ugly, perverse thing that refuses to comply, that
refuses to do my bidding. But then I realize, it’s not the book, it’s the fear
about the book. The Resistance. If only I had recognized this sooner, I could
have saved myself time and hassle. But maybe this is all part of the writing
process. Each lesson building on the other. Like Hemingway said, this is a
craft at which none of us ever become masters. All we can hope to do is get
into the ring, and go one more round with Resistance.